


a study on opposites and equality

by tothemovies (jarofactonbell)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, M/M, heavy character study of komori because i love him and i'm biased, observation fic, set during all japan intensive training camp, so many dashes i am in love with dashes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-14 14:49:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16494707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarofactonbell/pseuds/tothemovies
Summary: At the All Japan Intensive Training Camp, Tobio watches the people around him - in particular, Komori MotoyaHe looks at you like you are the ground under his feet and when he lands, you will be there. You are content with supporting him while not knowing that he leans on you too - but I exist in the space between, and I can attest, as long as I know that he will spike through any wall, that he is not an epiphyte, he is never wholly detached from you. You are the ground under his feet and he is the sky above your head, and equality may not exist but without one another I do not think it’s possible for the both of you to find your footing or direction.What does that mean, Kageyama?Komori huffed out a laugh in the cold December night.Please, call me Tobio. Tobio shrugged.And it means what you want it to mean.





	a study on opposites and equality

**Author's Note:**

> I love love love love love the little grouping of Chigaya, Kags, Atsumu, Sakusa, Hoshiumi and Komori that I said to myself - yeah I'm writing about them nobody is generating content for these dorks, I gotta take up the mantle - so here we are

 From the shadow of Sakusa, comes another. Komori Motoya. Best high school libero in Japan. A little shorter than Kageyama. All smiles, no malice.

Komori steers Sakusa away from him, friendly smiles fixed.

Tobio watches him.

 

He is very familiar to the nature of a unit - he had never seen one that strikes a balance between the two individuals in the diad. Even in his own coupling with Hinata, can he see a divide - this training camp and the one in Miyagi - he casts a much longer and extended shadow than Hinata is able to illuminate with his light -

Tobio closes his eyes, a palm over his lids - 

It seems that equality is a much harder concept to achieve in a sport such as volleyball.

 

Komori smiles a lot.

Especially at Tobio and Chigaya.

They come as a set because they don’t know anyone else - Chigaya too afraid to approach high calibre players on his own and Tobio finding no need to fraternise with potential opponents before national playoffs. It would result in a tricky situation that nobody wants involvement in - untangling himself from constant skirmishes with his own teammates is troublesome enough - challenging, or worse, befriending potential opponents is just asking for something to go _wrong._

Stepping a foot out of Sakusa’s shadow, Tobio startles to realise that Komori is tall - an aberration, for a libero. He’s taller than a number of spikers Tobio knows of - and he briefly wonders why Komori would play defense with an arsenal of height to his disposal.

He doesn’t voice this to Komori, who comes by the table he’s sitting with Chigaya, not a hint of malice in him.

“Hey,” he smiles, “how are you guys feeling? Sorry about K - Sakusa. He’s all hostility towards strangers, but he’s all bark and no bite. I hope you don’t mind all that.”

“It’s alright,” Tobio tells him, “I’m used to conflicts directed at me.”

Komori smiles even brighter. “That can’t be too good. Never get used to being the cause of conflict. K - Sakusa doesn’t pick fights often, so I really have to apologise for his lack of control yesterday.”

 _I heard that little hitch in your voice, Komori-san,_ he looks up at the libero.

Komori simply smiles, a tilt in his head. _And I intended you to. What do you make of it, little crow who brought down an eagle?_

Tobio treads, carefully. “You sound like you know Sakusa-san.” _Well._

“Do I? It must be because we’re teammates.” The look on Komori’s face doesn’t change.

Tobio doesn’t remember a time where _teammate_ carries such a laden meaning outside of a critical match point for national qualifier.

Because he’s a curious soul who will perish at the pursuit of knowledge that is better left alone, he ventures - further, further -

“Not partner?”

Komori leans back, closing his golden eyes.

“The ace and libero don’t work in direct partnership. Surely you know that, being the setter, Kageyama-kun.”

Tobio went and done it. Touched a nerve, set everything on fire. He scrambles for an apology, but in the eyes of everyone else, he had committed no fault. There’s no feasible manner of explanation, no words out there in the vast sea of syntax to describe the insult he had hurled onto someone who was on a path of a neutral ally -

He has the opportunity to become the partner that Komori could never strive to become.

In this world of volleyball and the court - it is predetermined, unchangeable.  

Tobio decides on an apology regardless- he may not feel the pain, but he can understand the sorrow.

“My apologies, I have simply assumed,” _like the buffoon I am,_ “that you and him arrive as a unit, of equal standing.”

“Oh, we do,” Komori smiles, “though it’s disproportionate, the space in the limelight.”

Tobio doesn’t know how to respond. Komori rotates his wrists, his smiles gentler, no malice.

“Don’t make that face. You might be accused of fraternising with the enemies.”

Chigaya turns to them. “I would love to fraternise with the enemies.”

Komori grins, the left side of his lips quirking higher. “After today’s game, Chigaya-kun.” At Tobio, he winks. “See you soon, Kageyama.”

 

Komori doesn’t stand out. Liberos typically don’t - and he is, first and foremost, loyal to that designation. Tobio doesn’t see him, but he doesn’t need to - like Nishinoya, he radiates the same quiet hyperfocus on the trajectory of the ball, shifts and the ball goes up, a perfect arc, for him to direct the spike.

Tobio jumps in the air, and he almost misses the little crinkle sitting on the curve of Komori’s lips. Sakusa spikes, the pause in his jump calculated, easily snatching a point for their half of the court.

Miya Atsumu bares his teeth from behind the squares of the net, canines flashing half in jest, half in genuine warning. _Do not think of usurping my reign, you upstarts. Stay on the ground._

It is addressed half to Tobio, half to someone else beyond him.

Tobio looks back. Komori is smiling, lips pressed into a crescent.

There is manic glee on his face.

Komori doesn’t need to stand out. Komori is already known by the leviathans fleeting across the great expanse above the span of the net.

 _With pleasure,_ the grin on Komori’s face says to Miya and Tobio. _The ground is where the likes of me thrive._

Sakusa is a much more reserved person than Tobio can ever begin to approach, therefore his dramatics as a causality whenever something short of a miracle blooms near him are almost absent from the ace’s face.

Tobio realises, late after the match, that Sakusa looked at Komori in the same manner that the libero had glimpsed at the serve heading over to the backline -

utter and unwavering faith, that there would be a receive, that there is a net of safety to fall back to when a crow’s wing is clipped -

that there is confidence in the abilities of the libero - just as Komori echoed back the shades of the same look - lesser in intensity, but by no mean lesser in intent -

the ace must blast through every wall and the libero keeps the ball up in the air -

neither has the job to give up.

(This, they agree in tandem.)

 

Miya Atsumu throws an arm around Tobio’s shoulder, humming.

“Yes?” He doesn’t look up, waits for Komori to come over.

“You should switch to spiking. I’ll set for you.”

“Miya-san -” he twists. “I told you already -”

“Hey kiddos,” Komori crouches down to them, beaming. “Fraternising, hey?”

“Sizing up opponents, more like,” Miya snorts, squeezing Tobio’s shoulder. “Become a spiker so I’ll have less competition this year, Tobio-kun ~”

He frowns, sensing the threat in the jest, but Miya is gone when he has a retaliation on his lips, with only Komori by his side.

“I’m taking you for a stroll” the older boy declares and takes his wrist, steering him outside.

 

“In a team, the libero is the cornerstone of defence. He keeps the ball up in the air for his teammates for counterattack on the other team. He supports the setup of attacks with the setter and he is the first point of contact in a set,” Komori Motoya had told him that night.

“- I may not be able to touch the ball last or carry the weight of success on my shoulder, as Kiyoomi does, but I carry the prevention of failure. As far as polar opposites go, I think we really score on the high scale.”

“There’s really no equality when I’m pitted against the ace of all players - he can’t really look back - it’s not the nature of this game to glance behind your shoulders and lose track of the ball - and as the ace, he must keep his gaze forward, at all time, and entrust his back to me.”

“I don’t suppose it makes sense and it won’t ever have to be,” Komori walked him to his dorm. “But I have his back and I’m happy to be in the shadows to support his growth.”

 _Sakusa Kiyoomi is Komori Motoya’s root in volleyball,_ Tobio took the words deep in his heart.

“This is where we say goodbye, Kageyama,” Komori smiled, in a way that wasn’t quite a smile.

Tobio, with his blunt words and lack of filter, thought that an observation should be made, to soothe, to comfort.

“As the,” setter, “bridge between the libero and the ace, I, well, I don’t see everything, but,” Tobio struggled, “you know whenever you received a difficult serve and we get a spike in,” he didn’t quite grasp the libero’s shoulder, “he looks at you - like, like -”

Tobio’s phone rings. A text, from Komori. A photo, of Sakusa falling asleep on a shoulder, the libero beaming into the camera, eyes crinkling.  
 

_He looks at you like you are the ground under his feet and when he lands, you will be there. You are content with supporting him while not knowing that he leans on you too - but I exist in the space between, and I can attest, as long as I know that he will spike through any wall, that he is not an epiphyte, he is never wholly detached from you. You are the ground under his feet and he is the sky above your head, and equality may not exist but without one another I do not think it’s possible for the both of you to find your footing or direction._

_What does that mean, Kageyama?_ Komori huffed out a laugh in the cold December night.

 _Please, call me Tobio._ Tobio shrugged.  _And it means what you want it to mean._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts?
> 
> Find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/jarofactonbell), [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/jenny_benny) and consider [the fact that I am poor and here is a kofi link](https://ko-fi.com/jarofactonbell)  
> 


End file.
